Kush

Some words can have multiple, yet enigmatic meanings. I find this interesting, as it shows the link between “language” and “culture”. Different linguistic metaphors, cultural anthropological studies showed, is what gave birth to different cultures.

This is one of those actually “logical” or “commonsensical” things of human history, that many not even realized.

ANTHROPOLOGY

I stumbled on that fact – that language use precedes culture – when I some time ago wrote an online review of the work ‘Anthropology for Dummies’ (2009), in that .. “for Dummies” series, for a Dutch website maintained by cultural anthropology students in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Don’t ask me how and why, but the review of the book was a nice task, as I found the book very insightful about human cultural history. Things that seemed logical, when just clearing your mind. For example: that through language metaphor choices differences in culture originate.

Another one is how the need to “store” agriculture produce, in warehouses, led to more sedentary settlements and societies. “Duh”, one might say.. yet many did not thought about it clearly. The same with the link between language use starting, or “articulating” cultural development.

To illustrate this, one word I wish to focus on in this blog post, is the word Kush, or the related term Cushite. In areas I am interested in, language, music, history, and geography, I kept encountering the terms Kush or Cushite. Whether written with a C or K.

The interesting thing is that the similar terms I noticed being used with seemingly different meanings.

WEED

Amsterdam, where I live, still has a name as a “free” marijuana-smoking, “coffeeshop” centre. Living for over 20 years in Amsterdam now, and not far from the city before that, I must also point out something. This “coffeeshop” image, seemed cool abroad, and even a source of pride for some Amsterdammers. The truth of the matter is, however, that the last decades the coffeeshops – such as the number of them – have been constantly under attack -, as were the every opening hours. After all, marijuana was only “decriminalized” in Dutch law, not “legalized”, which is a misconception. Governmental authorities thus still can limit and proscribe.

An “anti weed-tourism”, and – equally odd and intolerant – general “anti-tourism” current among Central Amsterdam residents, ultimately led to swindling numbers of coffee-shops, from around 1993 over 400 in Amsterdam, to now (2023) around 160. The opening hours of weed-selling coffeeshops were limited by law over time from 03:00 (and even 04:00 in some places), to 01:00. Recently added legislation decreed further that no new coffeeshops can be opened.

Smoking marijuana on the streets of the oldest part of the Centre in Amsterdam (Nieuwmarkt/”Red Light” area), has this year (since May 2023) even been forbidden and finable.

Despite this clear, “bullying” anti-coffeeshop/free-weed smoking policy, Amsterdam still – now in 2023 - has maintained quite some free-marijuana buy or smoke “coffeeshops”; just enough to maintain that image, however more and more limited and tainted.

I relate all this, because in several of these coffeeshops, they also sell “Kush”-type weeds. It is a common term in the marijuana-growers and –smokers world. After research I found out it refers to a mountain range in Pakistan/Afghanistan, known as Hindu Kush: a region with a long marijuana-growing history, especially of the potent “Indica” strain named, thus, Kush (original etymology is from a local language). Potent Indica means good to relax or sleep, rather than to party (for which uplifting “Sativa” strain weed is more suitable).

Weed experts (they are quite abundant) point at the common mistaken use of the term “Kush” nowadays, among “potheads”, often just meaning – or supposed to mean - “high grade” (high quality) when put behind a name of some weed/marijuana. Often there is not even a genetic relation with the Pakistan/Afghanistan Hindus Kush mountains anymore. It seems thus just a “weed marketing” term.

The term apparently got – derived from this - a life of its own internationally, as “Kush” is also a term used for an illegal drug (deemed “dangerous") in Sierra Leone.

AFRICA

When I encountered this term: on coffeeshop menus in Amsterdam or when smokers mentioned it – whether really genetically from that Hindu Kush region or not - , I however thought of something entirely else, showing my personal interest in history and languages. I thought of the language branch, I read about: “the Cushitic/Cushite languages”, spoken in quite another part of the world: Eastern (the “Horn of”) Africa: Somalia, Ethiopia and surroundings.

I also heard of the historical, ancient Kingdom of Kush, in Nubia in Africa (around Sudan), in the Nile-valley, with connections to famous Ancient Egypt, north of it, spreading South as far as central Sudan. Nubian dynasties provided Egypt with several “Black African” pharaos and kings or influences, contradicting the later “whitening” of Ancient Egypt, in Western (but also Arab) sources. The Nubian Kingdom of Kush arose from around 1100 BC, and had its peak around – historians say – around 770 BC, even dominating Egypt. Since then Egypt had Nubian/Kush pharaos.

Important cities of Nubia/the kingdom of Kush included Napata, in present-day Sudan. The fact that there are more pyramids as such in present-day Sudan than in Egypt, are an historic testament to this glorious period.

My own instrumental as a musician – named Napata - refers to that, also visually in its video photos (pyramids in present-day Sudan).

The word “Kush” for this kingdom, south of Egypt, is probably of local origin.

CUSHITIC LANGUAGES

I always assumed a link with the kingdom of Kush the mentioned Cushitic languages (and ethnic groups speaking them), in the Horn of Africa, but confusingly enough this is only limitedly there. Turns out that “Cush” is also a name in the Bible, of one of the sons of Ham (Cham). Ham gave the name Hamites to Northern Africans (Berber people), and Western linguists apparently wanted to name the newly categorized Afro-Asiatic language branch, distantly related to Hamitic languages, in Eastern Africa, after this Biblical character, Cush.

Of course there is a distance between Sudan and Oromia and Somalia – just like there is between Denmark and Spain, for instance – but still: a connection to Nubia seemed not far-fetched for me, also because Sudan borders Ethiopia, where the Oromo speak their Cushitic language. One of the larger ones –in fact – with over 25 million speakers, followed by quite some Somali speakers.

Cushitic languages are moreover also known in parts of what is now NE Sudan (even Egypt), and nearby western Eritrea. Not too far East of where once Napata/Kush was. The Beja people there speak a Cushitic language (the northern-most of the branch).

Both the Somali as the Oromo put somehow into question the “Asiatic” in the Afro-Asiatic language family. Though a very, very distant relationship is assumed by linguists with Semitic languages, and also a very distant one between Berber and Cushitic languages, genetic and archeological studies point at local African origins of both the Oromo people (in Southern Ethiopia and bordering Kenya), and of Somali people and language in Somalia itself. Very superficially a relatively darker skin, and more sub-Saharan African features – when compared to e.g. Arabs – already point at this.

Whereas the “Dutch coffeeshop”, marijuana-smokers term “Kush” refers in fact to South Asia and the Pakistan region, other meanings of Kush or Cushite thus refer to Africa.

This – like the term Nubian – has obtained a symbolical function among parts of the African diaspora in the West (Americas) as an identity reaffirmation and connection with ancestral Africa, where they were stolen from.

Nubia(ns) historically indeed had a High Civilization when compared to Europe at the time, and were mostly Black Africans: this was highly developed, and not just a myth invented by a Black power hobbyist, as some unjustly ridicule it.

REGGAE

In the Black Power-influenced Rastafari movement, and consequently in many Reggae lyrics, “Cushite” is used too, just as “Nubian”, to refer to an African heritage, similarly as in some “conscious” hip-hop among African-Americans in the US, and since the days of Malcolm X.

The Jamaican Reggae artist Winston McAnuff called his band (to perform and record with) the Black Kush band. A more recent, younger Reggae and Dancehall artist, also Rastafari-inspired, also goes by the name of Black Kush.

There was a Roots Reggae band called the Cushites as well (already by the 1970s).

More recently, also a lady singer (from Trinidad and Tobago) calls herself Kushite. With fine songs and good singing, she seems talented enough. From US Virgin Islands hails the artist calling himself Abja De Kushite.

Another Rastafari-inspired musical Reggae group from Jamaica (with older members) active now calls itself KushArt.

Among these conscious Rastafari-adhering Reggae artists, and also when used in lyrics – such as in I Wayne’s lyrics “The Kushites keep prevailing” (on the fine song Trample The Beast), a link with Africa seems more probable, than a quite shallow reference to the “kush” type of weed/marijuana. This use is not absent, even in Jamaica.. but only in cases when the lyrics are about marijuana.

Cushite or Kush is, again confusingly, therefore also used in reference to Marijuana (the Indica strain) in some Reggae lyrics, even by Rastafari-adhering artists often referring to Africa too. Yet another somehow confusing aspects of the use of the term “Cush”.

This confusion is played with, you can say. Hempress Sativa’s mellow song Kushite Love might refer to marijuana involvement (see also the weed-based wordplay of her artist name) in the love making, but also to fine love making between two black/African-descended people: she and a Black man. “African love”, so to speak.

“It’s all good”, in my opinion, as Black Americans say.

I imagined for a while that it might be marijuana from that part of Africa (just like you have weed from Congo or South Africa), and hash is smoked a lot in the Sudan-region - but it turns out I was mistaken (Hindu Kush mountains, Pakistan/Afghanistan), as I learned.

Well: in one’s own head one is free to still make and fantasize about that connection, haha.

SELASSIE

There are, besides this, also Reggae lyrics referring to Kush or Cushite as in Africa. Quite reasonably, as Ethiopia, of which Emperor Haile Selassie (venerated/worshipped among Rastafari) was Emperor, has a large “Cushitic-language” speaking ethnic group, the Oromo, of which – moreover – Haile Selassie himself partly descended.

Though often associated with the Amhara ethnicity (of which Selassie for another part also descended), the Emperor had through both his parents in fact a mixed-Ethiopian ethnic background (Amhara, Oromo, Gurage, a.o.). So, he was in fact also “Cushitic”, ethnically, one might say, though identified as Amhara (and as a Christian).

In Ethiopia itself, the (mostly Orthodox Christian) Amhara ethnic group – speaking a Semitic-derived language - , are known as a relatively “lighter-skinned”, Arabian Peninsula-descended group, yet: they mixed with local Africans.

This – and the other (African) ethnic origins of Haile Selassie – makes Selassie being a deity/figurehead for the Afro-centric Rastafari movement at least sensible, certainly in a symbolic sense.

HISTORY OF AFRICA

Therefore, despite the worn-out cliché of Rasta Reggae artists smoking marijuana (incl. Kush for Indica-likers), the term Cushite has a significant, quite interesting meaning in the originally Jamaican Rastafari movement. Multiple, yet valuable. Perhaps by extension – also in light of the ancient Nubian kingdom Kush – also for the entire African Diaspora and Africa itself.

It helps at least to shed light on the fact that Africa had a varied and developed history before slavery put it on the self-interested European colonizers’ map. It had advanced civilizations – including science - at the time when Greek and Rome still lived as the primitive “Barbarians” they later criticized.

An advanced civilization is not always good or more humane for all – after all often requiring exploitation and slavery – than a human life more balanced with nature, but it shows the variety and versatility of Africa’s rich history, including of sub-Saharan “Black” Africans, when part of the Europeans still lived in caves or huts, and not yet cities.

Again: “cities” - the big city - is not by definition a good thing, and often a prerequisite for conquest and exploitation. The first city with 100.000 inhabitants was ancient Babylon (enslaving many people), in present-day Iraq, and the first one with a million inhabitants Rome, in present-day Italy, known for military conquests and unequal societies with slavery.

The Nubian Kingdom of Kush, and before that Egypt, bordering in the North to it, were similar “conquering”, powerful (and unequal) civilizations, with slavery. Kush was particularly known for its gold, enabling its power.

MORE?

Other meanings of Kush I do not know of, though Indica-strain ”Kush” weeds indeed stimulate sleeping/relaxing (downers), reason for which I find the similarity to the French word “couch(er)” (to lay down, go to bed/sleep) a funny coincidence. Pure coincidence, as Latin-derived. In Spanish (another Latin-derived language) it would be “acostar(se)”, so quite different, but from the same Latin root..

All these multiple meaning are thus at the same times confusing, as they are interesting and creative.

All this illustrates what was explained in the ‘Antropology for Dummies’ book I reviewed once: the possibility of language (methapors) for cultural creation.

Maracas, Cuba, and Fernando Ortiz

It almost is like the proverbial “elephant in the room”, in my case: the Maracas. A well-known, round-like with handle, shaker instrument known from Cuban and “Latin” musical cultures mostly, although not always under that name.

I am a percussionist, and wrote quite a lot about percussion instruments on my (this) blog. Instruments I use a lot, and even those a bit less (my article about tambourines, for instance). Maybe in one sense the “Maracas” seemed too cliché, too common an instrument, to warrant extra attention, but that is not even true.

I find the Maracas as used in e.g. Cuban music in fact interesting. It might not seem a “spectacular” or “rough” instrument, rather “mellow” and “soft”, one might say, but it is nice and even more influential than some would imagine. Maracas also have a long history, that is global.

FERNANDO ORTIZ

I recently read a small book by Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969), who studied Afro-Cuban life and culture, and had influence even in wider Caribbean studies. There is also an institute in Cuba named after him (which I visited).

Ortiz was a white Cuban (of primarily Spanish descent) with a sincere interest in Afro-Cuban culture. It became sincere, but started out wrong. Early in his career more politically involved, he started studying criminal life among some Black Cubans, even employing some nonsensical, not to say morally dubious theories, such as from the rightly discarded “phrenology” idea: that criminal tendencies would show in the physical traits of people (outside, or the brain). That he focused on black Cubans at first, made it even more dubious. Also, the link between phrenology and now also discarded eugenics is historically tainted, though the latter “eugenic” foolishness persisted even beyond Nazism, up to the 1970s in parts of the US and Europe (the father of the influential billionaire Bill Gates was involved in it).

These Afro-Cuban “underground” people Ortiz “studied”, were mostly members from the secret society Abakuá (largely of Efik-Ibibio, Calabar/Cameroun/Nigeria origin) that had cultural organizations, regarded though – today we would say “framed” – also as criminal havens. Largely unjustly criminalized, but the government wanted more control (even before communism).

Ortiz however proved, over time, that he had an open mind, and was not a hardcore racist. He even changed - also by his own admittance - starting to focus on the beauty and variety of Afro-Cuban expressions: its varied African origins, and contributions to Cuban culture and music. Maybe it’s even a kind of “falling in love”, in some sense. There’s some “literary” beauty in this change of Ortiz, from Saul to Paul.., haha

Henceforth this became his focus, as he also became more anti-racist by the 1940s. He wrote some larger studies about Afro-Cuban and Cuban culture, with some anthropological influence even beyond “Cuban studies” - such as his coining of the term “transculturation” – but also some smaller works about aspects of Afro-Cuban culture.

MARACAS BOOK

As part of his series about typical Afro Cuban musical instruments, Ortiz also wrote about Maracas (shakers), in the 1950s. The book ‘Las Maracas’ in the series ‘Los instrumentos de la musica afrocubana” (the instruments of Afro-Cuban music), by Fernando Ortiz..

This I read recently, and I will focus on it, as fitting the theme I chose. It further also served me, to find out what I really know about shakers or Maracas.

Ortiz’s book seemed to have appeared only in Spanish (a translation is a good idea), but luckily I can read that language.

I do not know much about the academic culture in Cuba or the Spanish-speaking world of then, but this small book is more a “flux de bouche” as they say in French, or “ramble” in English. With little structure, paragraphs, no blank lines/extra space, or heads..

Fortunately, Ortiz writes quite attractively and engagingly, though with a tendency to “comma writing” as I call it: long sentences with “side paths”. I have that tendency too, so won’t criticize it too much, haha.

In the book, anyway, he shows his open mind and wide interest. He also shows his broad knowledge about – or study of - cultures even outside Cuba, as a true anthropologist.

One thing I asked myself about Maracas, were their origins. Of course, I saw Maracas being played often by Cuban musical groups – in Cuba itself – and in other “folksy” genres from the Caribbean, Latin America, or Africa. I even saw it sometimes as part of the “repertoire” or standard set of percussionists even in ‘pop music” groups (modern Reggae, Funk, R&B). I even played them myself live (on Funk, Blues, Latin, or Reggae music).

Despite its evident place in “Black” music, I always wondered if their origins might by African or Amerindian. Also because I read somewhere about its historical use among Amerindians in the Americas, including in the Amazon region. Later I noted Shékere and other shaker uses in traditional African music, of course, roundish and gourd-based, but these could differ in shape from this “rounder” Maracas (with stick) shape.. I thought so, at least..

Here Ortiz gave me some useful answers in his book.

ROOTS AND ROUTES

As the Wikipedia-articles are short and not very informative, I could not find much before. Under the name Ortiz used, “maracas”, there were at least only short articles in Wikipedia in English and Dutch – of mediocre quality - , and a bit a longer one in Spanish, also not very good.

By the way, the terminology in the Netherlands is kind of funny, as the Maracas are also known in Dutch as “sambaballen”, literally: “samba balls” . One might think: just colloquially, I imagine?.. no, even semi-official. Of course it is not correct, especially since not used (round maracas) as such in Brazilian samba. Brazil has its own known “shakers” (like the cylindrical Ganza, different from Maracas), besides similar, “roundish” Maracas with stick (named also Maracas in Brazil). The “vague exotic” as reference in Dutch.. There was even carnival pop hit song about it, high on the Dutch charts with “samba-ballen” in the title, by comedian André van Duin. Admittedly, not "high" culture or comedy (according to some), but the term "sambaballen" is still used in Dutch, if erroneous.

Ortiz pays some attention to the etymology of “maracas”. Not uninteresting, but with the risk of becoming tedious, after finding out that the word has Amerindian origins, comparing among languages. Some authors (including those cited on Wikipedia) trace the term “maraca” back to the Guarani in and around Paraguay.

He pays more attention to origins of the instrument itself, and this I found more interesting. It is a bit blemished – maybe – by some less-political correct terminology (by today’s standards), but overall very engaging and educational.

PRIMITIVE

Ortiz associates the shaker use with “primitive” cultures, and takes on a global approach. Africa, Asia, the Americas: all knew “shaker” or “maraca”-like instruments.

He details the “sacred” and ritual use of maracas in various Amerindian cultures, such as the Tupi in the Amazon region, among the Guarani, the Guyanas, among the Inca, in Mexico, and further concentrating on the Arowaks (or Tainos) that once lived in Cuba, before Columbus. The maracas were used with different intensities – or not at all - among Amerindian groups, dependent further on period. It was even – according to some scholars – not known before a certain period, when maize growing began in Central America, then on to the Amazon and Guyanas region, from which the Arawaks later travelled to Cuba and other Caribbean islands.

Interestingly to consider, how Ortiz describes, that “maracas” are now absent in more developed, modern societies like Europe, unlike other types of instruments. Too primitive or natural, seems the suggestion. Shaker sounds only survived as indirect references in folk genres in (very) rural parts of Italy, Greece, and Spain. The modern city killed the “soft-sounding”, rustic Maracas, it seemed, one can say.

Its sound (which Ortiz compares to rainfall, one can say ‘jungle sounds” too) is also directly connected to a more (tropical) natural life and surroundings. The African and Amerindian societies, moreover, kept Maracas use alive up to in present-day music, amid modernity.. An interesting fact.

In their early stage, the maracas/shaker use was not yet so widespread in the Americas, yet there is historical evidence of Maracas use among at least a part of Taino or Arawaks in Cuba before Columbus, also living on in folk stories.

CUBA

With the arrival of Columbus, colonization, and destruction, many “pure” Tainos (related to Arawaks) disappeared from Cuba: slavery, death, while the remaining ones mixed with Europeans and Africans in Cuba.

When I was in Cuba, I heard that the remaining Arawak (or in Spanish: Tainos) Amerindian blood was visible in racial mixtures of people in the region around the Far East of Cuba (around Baracoa), and some pockets in Eastern Cuba, and in the Far West (tobacco growing), Pinar Del Río part of Cuba.

What’s said in the Wikipedia article: that they are of Amerindian origin, including the well-known Cuban one, is according to this book of Ortiz not entirely true..

He emphasizes in Cuba the relevance of two sources of origins for maracas: the Americas, but also Africa.

He not even states that Africans saw the Maraca used by indigenous Arawaks in Cuba, and that that “reminded” them of their own, but goes further. He points out that Africans despite enslavement could bring their own Maracas-like shakers, according to African values and aesthetics, preferring these over local, present ones, even if having to remake them in Cuba.

In the case of e.g. Venezuela or parts of Colombia, where Amerindians far outnumbered Africans, the Africans there might indeed copy Amerindian models, but in the case of Cuba, according to Ortiz, the Africans brought their own models from Africa.

USE

He pays attention to the use of maracas among Afro-Cubans and in Africa, partly sacred, though to a lesser degree than among the Amerindians. It was after all used also mainly musically and rhythmically in African cultures, besides in some spiritual traditions, such as of Yoruba and Congo origin. For the latter, special, “holy” seeds or stone or wood pieces were gathered for the Maracas’ inside.

In Amerindian cultures there was a musical use too, but more often also ritual among some peoples, with not even a musical, but rather “sonic” (messages, healing, other rituals) function.

In some parts of Africa – such as the South East (Mozambique a.a.), there is a specific “female” reserved use for Maracas. Some other parts of Africa too, but within Cuba, Ortiz did not note any “prescribed” gender distinction in Maraca use among Afro-Cubans.

In the neo-African Rastafari tradition, originating in Jamaica since the 1930s, such a gender distinction is found in (spiritual) Nyahbinghi drumming (and chanting) sessions, around “heart beat” rhythms, with clear African musical retentions (Ghana, Congo), but also Protestant and Biblical influences. Maracas/shakers tend to play along with the drummed “heart beats” in Nyabinghi sessions. These drummers are traditionally only men, while women could sing along, and were “allowed” to play shakers, often a kind of wooden maraca, similar in roundish shape to the Cuban ones, only often bigger and decorated), but women were not allowed to play the drums.

Whether this gender distinction is actually a direct African retention like the Congo/Kumina “heart beat” drumming or Kete drums, or rather a later, even “Bible-influenced” rule, added in Protestant-influenced Jamaica, is hard to determine. Some Nyahbinghi Rastas assume an African retention, others refer to the Bible.

DEVELOPMENTS

He further sketches developments of the forms of Maracas, from almost purely natural calabashes and gourds with dried seeds - natural shakers, so to speak - to “man-made” ones (with sticks). Such old, “natural” gourd shakers are still used in traditional Igbo music (SE Nigeria), for instance, and elsewhere in Africa.

Proper man-made Maracas, Ortiz further explains, have that stick through the whole and to the top, else – with loose stick added – it is mostly “for tourist” souvenir of Cuba use, and less enduring. Sizes and seed use came to differ over time, being originally comparable in size to “oranges”, but bigger maracas (like say: a melon- or watermelon-size) developed too. Colombian-syle maracas tend to be these bigger ones.. Material changed from gourd to other fruits, wood, and later even metal and other material.

That is where the “route” more or less stops, as Ortiz pays much more attention to the “roots” of maracas, than its routes. He follows the historical “route” a bit, but not into the various Cuban (or Latin American) music genres of recent times..

He wrote this in the 1950s, but these (Son, Rumba, Mambo, etcetera) existed by then too. In this book – and in others of the series – he addresses more the Afro-Cuban religious/spiritual use, such as in Santería and Congo (Mayombe) religions.

In another book, about Abakuá instruments, he points out that these do not use shakers or maracas, but African traditions of Yoruba or Congo origin, like Santería and Mayombe quite a lot of shakers, also historically.

The common use of Maracas in early forms of Son, the Son Changui, in Guantánamo, Eastern Cuba, might point at a Congo, rather than an Amerindian origin, as long assumed. There is after all a strong Congo influence in Eastern Cuba, noticeable in Son music (and related later Salsa, Bachata, and other genres), also because of the high percentage of slaves from the Congo region in Eastern Cuba.

It became common in popular Cuban music, a route this book by Ortiz only hints at, and with that influenced other Latin American and Caribbean genres. He takes this use in Cuba for granted, hinting further at indications of more future use by Western musicians, or in classical music..

Ortiz also chose to give practical playing information, though in a broad sense, and other “material” issues, such as of what’s the variation of seeds used inside the Maracas. From etymology, he deduces that in the Congo region originally maize/corn seeds tended to be used. Later more varied seeds, or stones. Even non-natural pieces.

CONCLUSION

Fernando Ortiz’s short study for his book on Maracas, is thus more about its origins, and gives quite some practical and material details of the instrument.

Its spread throughout different Caribbean and Latin music genres would of course be an interesting topic, including aspects like different uses/playing styles.

That is left more, presumably, to musicologists or historians.

Still, I found the book about Maracas useful and informative for me, especially teaching me about the Maracas’ roots, as both Amerindian and African, in the case of Cuba. A good tree needs good roots – like a natural foundation -, and the “branches” of this firmly rooted tree – on which percussionists like me move – then grow by themselves..

The Spanish text on the book’s back cover uses “big words” for Ortiz’s works on ‘Los instrumentos de la musica afrocubana’, describing the series of books as “monumental” and even “no superada hasta ahoy”, translatable as: “not outdone (or improved) up to today” – even if going back to the 1950s.

Big words, but at least regarding the “roots” and origins of the Maracas, Fernando Ortiz’s small, anthropological book The Maracas, remains indeed foundational, and the main information source, cited/quoted also in later academic studies on Cuban and other music.. It was in that sense “groundbreaking”, even this small book on Maracas I discussed here.

I think, anyway, that these origins are good to know for me, as a percussion player, perhaps even necessary..

Simon Carmiggelt

Simon Carmiggelt (1913-1987) was een bijzondere Nederlandse auteur, maar is ook één van die “televisie-herinneringen” voor veel mensen. Zonder twijfel is dat een “generatie-ding”. Tot in de 1980s heb ik nog bewust zijn zogenaamde ‘kronkels’ op televisie gezien: voorgelezen verhaaltjes, anekdotisch, meestal poetisch. Iemand – mogelijk hijzelf – noemde deze treffend “schetsen”, wat ik een mooie aanduiding vind. Alledaagse taferelen en gesprekken, maar toch met een diepere laag. In 1987 was zijn laatste tv-uitzending en “kronkel”. Hij was echter al veel langer op tv, ook in de jaren 70 bij de VARA.

SOCIAAL-DEMOCRATISCH

Carmiggelt is geboren in Den Haag. Of hij een “Hagenaar” – uit een rijk deel/rijke familie – of een “Hagenees” – uit een armer deel of armere familie – weet ik eigenlijk niet. Hij zat in ieder geval veelal in de “linkse”, sociaal-democratische hoek – kwam ook uit zo’n nest -, en schreef zijn stukken (“kronkels” of “schetsen”) dan ook een flink deel van zijn leven voor sociaal-democratische kranten als Vooruit, deel van Het Volk, en later dus voor het Parool. Hij deed ook (kritisch) verslag van het fascisme in Nederland vóór de oorlog, de NSB van Mussert en kleinere clubs.

Hij verzette zich al steeds meer tegen de Nazi’s, na de bezetting in 1940, onder meer via heimelijk verzetswerk - dus bleef kritisch. Ook werd hij ontslagen omdat hij weigerde de "Ariër-verklaring" te tekenen. Voorzichtig (want hij had een gezin) was hij dus rebels. Zijn indirecte betrokkenheid bij oprichting van verzetsblad het Parool, en de verspreiding ervan, deden hem uiteindelijk opgepakt worden. Dat latere verzetswerk voor het Parool in de oorlogsjaren, deden Carmiggelt uiteindelijk ook in Amsterdam belanden en ook blijven.

Puur naar de manier kijkend waarop hij in Amsterdam terecht kwam, deels toeval, deels keuze, en op dezelfde leeftijd (we waren beide rond de 29 jaar oud, toen we naar Amsterdam kwamen), herken ik mijzelf wel in Carmiggelt, zij het in een totaal andere tijd, en ik kwam uit een klein Noord-Holland’s dorp, hij uit Den Haag. Net als ik had hij een nuttige “blik van buiten” op de hoofdstad, die soms van zelfgenoegzaamheid aan elkaar hangt, maar ook fascineert door de variatie, drukte, en gekte. Verder “hingen” we wel grotendeels in andere kringen, maar dat even terzijde.

Op zijn minst sympathiseerde hij voorts met de onderklasse, of hij nu wel hun ontberingen kende uit ervaring, of niet: dat laatste komt immers zo vaak voor. Arme arbeiders houden minder tijd en energie over na hun zware, vaak geestdodende werk dienend om alleen maar rond te komen, voor iets als schrijven, kunst maken, of zelfs filosoferen over hun levenssituatie. ‘Erst das Fressen, dann die Moral’, dixit Berthold Brecht.

Ik herinner mij dat Carmiggelt’s “kronkels” mij aanspraken: de droge, doch plezierig-relativerende manier waarop hij ze voorlas, en de verhalen zelf. Vaak gingen die verhalen over een stad, de grote stad, Amsterdam, zo’n 20 km van waar ik toen woonde. Vaak in kroegen. Niet eens zo ver, maar moeilijk bereikbaar voor mij op die leeftijd, en een andere, fascinerende, spannende grootstedelijke wereld.

KROEG

Of het een reëel beeld was, betwijfel ik nu, maar ik had een beeld van Amsterdamse, specifiek Jordanese, “bruine” kroegen waar eigenzinnige, grappige types rondhingen, met die typisch Amsterdamse “bijdehante” humor, en zelfs voor noordelijke streken toch aardig wat “Napolitaanse” zanglust, imitatie of niet.

Mijn moeder vertelde mij ooit een leuk verhaal. Vertaald uit het Spaans zei ze het zo: “je vader nam me een keer mee naar zo’n Jordanese, Amsterdamse kroeg, sommige dronken mensen zongen mee..”..

Ik kon eruit niet opmaken of ze het leuk vond. Hoe ze het formuleerde was het iets als “het was blijkbaar nodig”. Mogelijk verstond ze toen ook weinig. Vrijheid is altijd beter – zelfs vrijheid met “slechte” of andere smaak – zal ze waarschijnlijk gedacht hebben, immers na het cynisme, de repressie, en de leugenachtigheid, in het Spanje onder het (fascistische) Franco regime, dat ze pas verlaten had.

Een wat meer en eerder geïntegreerde Italiaan – die al aardig wat Nederlands sprak – wilde even zijn kersverse Spaanse vrouw helpen integreren en Nederland begrijpen. Dat vond ik eigenlijk het mooiste van dit verhaal. Een soort ongemakkelijk geuite liefde.

Welnu, zo’n verhaal van mijn moeder, maar dan met meer “dialoog”, zou ook een verhaal, een “kronkel” van Carmiggelt kunnen zijn.

PRAATGROEPEN

Hij schreef weliswaar vooral over wat oudere Nederlandse, wat burgerlijk levende, mensen – wel vaak echtparen -, maar qua thematiek en setting waren er overeenkomsten. Ook de “ongemakkelijk geuite liefde” is terugkerend is in Carmiggelt’s verhalen.

Het was ook de tijd toen mannen moeilijker open over gevoelens praten, zeker van wat oudere generaties, zoals mijn vader, en de echtgenoten, kroegtijgers, en oude vaders die Carmiggelt’s verhalen bevolken.

Die hadden de jaren 70 hippie en “flower power” tijd niet echt meegemaakt. De “praatgroepen”, de “feminisering” van mannen, zoals schrijver Stephan Sanders dat eens beschreef, van de commune’s en progressiever onderwijs; dat had nog weinig invloed op mannen van deze oudere generatie. Mannen moesten mannen zijn, werken, en stoer doen. Niet in elk geval hetzelfde als liefdeloos zijn, maar wel vaak zakelijk en afstandelijk.

Over die moeizame gesprekken en uitingen tussen mensen, en vaak ook man en vrouw, gingen veel van Carmiggelt’s “schetsen”. Dit analyseer ik op basis van een grote steekproef van zijn verhalen.

THEMA’S

Een diepere, maatschappelijke betekenis, richting het abstracte, vermeed Carmiggelt vaak, merkte ik. Uitbuiting, armoede, vervolging, als thema’s dienen wel regelmatig als referentie voor de “schets” van personen en situaties. Soms ook heel mooi en subtiel, vind ik, zoals hij via een bepaalde woordkeuze toch naar onrecht of misstanden verwijst, vanuit het alledaagse. Menselijke relaties en “eenzaamheid” blijven daarbij echter toch hoofdthema’s.

Elders op dit blog maak ik wel het onderscheid tussen schrijvers goed in “denkprocessen” en directe communicatie, en die beter in sfeer- en beeldschetsen, in het visualiseren.

Carmiggelt is duidelijk van de eerste categorie. Hij beschrijft gesprekken tussen mensen, voornamelijk. De settings waar deze plaatsvinden worden wel genoemd maar niet beschreven, of slechts heel schetsmatig. Het gaat hem om de menselijke relaties in die setting.

Een licht-formele toon was Carmiggelt niet vreemd. Beleefde aanspreekvormen, maar ook formeel ten aanzien van instituties. Dit diende denk ik onbewust om zijn gevoel er buiten te houden, of in ieder geval te beperken: zo van: “ik verlies mij hier niet in loze emotie, maar houd het zakelijk..”. Hetzelfde doel diende de soms wat archaïsche woordkeuze.

DROOGKOMISCH

Net zo “droog” als hij de gesprekken of gedragingen optekent of beschrijft. Echter: hier is Carmiggelt wat speelser en vrijer in zijn beschrijvingen, met meer ruimte voor gevoelens.

Vaak ook humoristisch en droogkomisch, zulke nevenbeschouwingen. Zoals het noemen in een van zijn verhalen in de bundel getiteld ‘Weet Ik Veel’ (typische titel) van een vroegere schoolgenoot, die Carmiggelt als spreker wilde boeken. Carmiggelt had weinig herinneringen aan hem, maar hij merkte dat de schoolgenoot zo enthousiast over die middelbare school-tijd sprak dat hij, zo dacht hij, “daarna nooit meer iets leuks had meegemaakt”. Daar moest ik om lachen.

Het was ook een grappige en herkenbare observatie, maar zo heeft hij er aardig wat door zijn “schetsen”. Ik had regelmatig glimlach-momenten, zelfs af en toe “hardop lach” momenten.

Iets ertussen in had ik bij weer zo’n droogkomische beschrijving van Carmiggelt, ook in de bundel Weet Ik Veel. Een man komt een café binnen en noemt een naam, en of die van de eigenaar achter de bar was. Carmiggelt beschreef hoe de kastelein “zonder geestdrift” hierop zei “dat ben ik”.

Een klein, maar grappig detail, want herkenbaar. Een nuchtere, Amsterdamse Nederlandse man, bijna-mompelend en op rustige toon, zonder stemverheffing: “dat ben ik”.

Die woorden “zonder geestdrift” zijn des te genialer gekozen, omdat het toch raar is als iemand je vraagt “ben je.. (en dan je hele naam)..”. Zelfs voor een bareigenaar, want die kent men hoogstens van voornaam. Dat er geen geestdrift is toch wel noemenswaardig.

Met veelal als achtergrond Amsterdam, en in die tijd, speelde de oorlog uiteraard een rol in een deel van zijn “kronkels”, maatschappelijke problemen en ongelijkheid ook in vele “schetsen” direct of indirect, maar toch.. Het ging vooral om het alledaagse optekenen, en menselijke relaties.

ALLEDAAGSE MENSEN

Die alledaagse, menselijke relaties dienen eigenlijk niet als middel of “handvat” voor een ideologie, ook niet de “socialistische”. Dat is in Carmiggelt te prijzen: hij blijft de concrete, complexe mens zien, geen geabstraheerd “middel” of “functioneel wezen”, immers een voorbode van nog gevaarlijker ontmenselijking.

Daar komen de lessen terug die hij als jongeling leerde in de jaren 30 vóór de Tweede Wereldoorlog, verslag doend als journalist voor het socialistische blad Vooruit, bij bijeenkomsten van de NSB en verwante fascisten in Nederland. De geuite ideologieën en leuzen op zulke bijeenkomsten waren bepaald totalitair: “men wilde het volk gelukkig maken”, tekende Carmiggelt op. Wijselijk leerde hij hiervan dat zulke politieke “beloften ”het volk gelukkig te maken” kwaadaardig zijn en te wantrouwen.

Het is bovendien nogal collectivistisch, wat iets is dat fascisme met communisme deelt, en andere totalitaire systemen. Het cijfert het individu weg. Mogelijk dat daarom Carmiggelt zo alledaags en intermenselijk gericht was in zijn “kronkels”. Gewone mensen die leven op hun manier. Psychologie in plaats van sociologie..

Carmiggelt schrijft daar goed over, onderhoudend en creatief, vaak geestig. Dat wil echter niet zeggen dat ik alle mensen die zijn kronkels bevolken even sympathiek vind. Er zitten schatten bij, maar ook cynische egoïsten, en alles ertussen in.

Dat klopt echter ook, want een doorsnede van Amsterdam. Dat harde, ongevoelige in het karakter van sommige Amsterdammers weerspiegelt de anonieme, koude, en drukke stad. Tegelijkertijd is er in zo’n kille context altijd de zoektocht naar liefde en menselijke warmte, bij veel mensen.

Die zucht en zoektocht komt ook goed naar voren in Carmiggelt’s verhalen, zij het soms wat “onhandig” of indirect geuit. Ook door de ingehouden “pre-praatgroepen” en “pre-hippie tijd” mores.

REPRESENTATIEF

In 1987 overleed Carmiggelt. Het is nu een andere tijd, maar ook rond die tijd was Amsterdam al wat multicultureler geworden. Nu zouden qua stijl en focus Carmiggeltiaanse “kronkels” in Amsterdam een stuk diverser zijn. Als ze althans als “representatief” van heel Amsterdam willen gelden.

Het waren in Carmiggelt’s verhalen immers vooral witte Nederlanders van middelbare leeftijd of ouder, vaak tamelijk ordelijk levend, gezinnetjes, opgroeiende kinderen, de rekeningen betalen..zulke besognes. Alcohol bleek vaak de grootste ondeugd in tamelijk burgerlijke leventjes.

Er zaten weinig vrijdenkende, losgeslagen kunstenaars tussen, die ook nog rare drugs gebruikten, of wat jongere anarchistische krakers, zoals je in Carmiggelt’s tijd al had.

Ook zaten er nauwelijks Surinamers tussen, toch een grote groep in Amsterdam. Interessant als groep, omdat de mate van “vernederlandst” zijn wisselt per Surinamer. Ook geen Marokkanen of Turken, of andere groepen. Eigen, wat geslotener gemeenschappen met minder gemengde relaties met Nederlanders dan Surinamers, maar toch..

Multiculturele relaties en gesprekken – en culturele verschillen - zouden nu een interessant thema voor Carmiggelt’s verhaaltjes zijn, met Amsterdam als achtergrond.

EIGEN ERVARING

Uit mijn eigen ervaring kan ik zo een aantal verhalen “opdreunen”, of in ieder geval geestige anekdotes in Amsterdam navertellen, op een Carmiggeltiaanse manier. Zonder al te groffe, seksuele, of intieme details, uiteraard, maar interessante gesprekken en meningen over de wereld en alledaagse levens van bijvoorbeeld een Ghanese in een van die flats in de Bijlmermeer, toen vernieuwende architectuur, anno 2023 verwaarloosd en tochtig. Ook de verhalen vol alledaags crypto-racisme, van een van de weinige Surinaamse café-eigenaars door de jaren heen in de Nieuwmarkt-buurt in het oude centrum van Amsterdam.

Ik ken meerdere “flamboyante” muzikanten en aspirant-muzikanten, en nog een andere categorie die ik als juist "niet-aspirant" muzikanten zou typeren. Ze kunnen goed een instrument bespelen, wat blijkt tijdens jams in clubs, maar hun muzikale ambitie blijft onduidelijk of moeizaam, gezien – ondanks vaak vrije geesten - concessies aan het burgermansleven, waar wel genoeg geld verdiend wordt. Dat is ook interessant, voor een moderne “kronkel”.

Ik heb ook meerdere droogkomische anekdotes of alledaagse “schetsen” over blowers (wiet-gebruikers) in coffeeshops of elders in Amsterdam, legendarische gesprekken in coffeeshops. Een andere leefwereld en leeftijdsgroep dan Carmiggelt’s personages, maar het kan vergelijkbaar geschreven verhalen, of “kronkels” opleveren, net zoals de drinkende, autochtone, oudere mannen in kroegen in een deel van Carmiggelt’s verhalen.

Ik ken verder een Syriër, ooit asielzoeker, die moest wennen aan “lage plafonds” in Amsterdamse woningen, en die de corona “lockdowns” en avondklok herinnerde aan wat hij in Syrië verliet. Om daarna weer Carmiggeltiaans terug te gaan naar het alledaagse. De Syrische jongeman heeft om een of andere reden een voorliefde voor de maté-drank uit Zuid-Amerika te hebben ontwikkeld. Vast op het menu in zijn kleine appartement in Amsterdam-West, ook toen ik bij hem op visite kwam.

Ikzelf raakte op de fiets altijd verdwaald als ik naar Amsterdam-Noord moest, en raakte soms al depressief op de pont over het IJ. Laatst was historisch: voor het eerst raakte ik niet verdwaald. Zit ook een verhaal in, hoewel Carmiggelt meer de nadruk op gesprekken legde.

Allemaal niet erg spectaculaire dingen, die als “schets” toch iets zeggen. Een belangrijke les: dat we allemaal gewoon maar mensen zijn. Ongeacht huidskleur, culturele achtergrond, buitenlander of Nederlander, geslacht, leeftijd, en levenskeuzes. Levenskeuzes kunnen verschillen, maar “ongeveer” en meer abstract willen we allemaal hetzelfde: vervulling en respect.

Dat kan alledaags, beeldend, oer-menselijk zijn, en tegelijk extra leerzaam over maatschappelijke problemen in het huidige Amsterdam. Een beetje zoals Carmiggelt deed: daarnaar verwijzen vanuit het alledaagse leven tussen mensen, maar dan dus met het huidige, diverse Amsterdam als achtergrond.

Geen slecht idee, haha. Ook om te onderzoeken of de 1960s en 1970s “flower power”-tijd hippie-commune “praatgroepen” of feminisering echt mannen beter over “gevoelens” heeft doen praten.. of dat met andere woorden blijvend effect heeft gehad op de huidige, jonge generatie Nederlanders, of bij minderheden die uit een andere cultuur kwamen met minder moderne man-vrouw verhoudingen, en nog “machismo” waarden. Interessante vragen.

Mijn voorzichtige inschatting op basis van mannen die ik ken (Nederlanders, buitenlands, oud en jong) is dat dat effect er is, maar beperkt. Vrouwen zijn nog steeds beter en eerlijker in het open praten over gevoelens. Mannen "bluffen" vaak nog steeds vooral.

CONCLUSIE

Hoe dan ook, ik vond Simon Carmiggelt voor zijn tijd een goede, onderhoudende schrijver en verteller. Uniek met zijn droogkomische “schetsen” van het alledaagse in Amsterdam, een goed tijdsbeeld gevend van “gewone”, veelal autochtone Amsterdammers. Ik hou ook van schrijven, sinds mijn vroege tienerjaren, dus kan mogelijk een beetje door Carmiggelt beïnvloed zijn, bij mijn pogingen essays en romans te schrijven, al vrees ik dat de invloed van iemand als Mulisch groter is geweest, en van latere Nederlandse schrijvers en essayisten (Stephan Sanders bijv.), naast buitenlandse schrijvers (Frans, Spaans, Nigeriaans, Caraïbisch e.a.).

Hij speelde een goede, zelfs heldhaftige rol bij de begintijd van het Parool, in verzet tegen het Nazi regime in bezet Nederland, met alle risico’s van dien, maar voor de waarheid en vrijheid.

Carmiggelt leefde dat min of meer door zijn oprechte menselijke interesse – de mens als doel op zichzelf beschouwend, en niet als middel voor een ideologie - , en bleef bovendien ook schrijven voor het Parool tot zijn dood in 1987.

Dat “verzet” is voorzichtig gezegd wat minder duidelijk, de laatste jaren in het huidige dagblad het Parool, net als bij andere dagbladen; overheidsnarratieven worden doorgaans blind gevolgd (de corona en “vaccin” nonsens), bij uitzondering wat kritische zin, van een dwarse columnist, maar geen systeemkritiek, niet eens regeringskritiek, en wel heel selectieve “quasi-linkse” verontwaardiging rond bepaalde thema’s, maar hypocriet gezwijg over ander onrecht. Ook onrecht (in Afrika bijvoorbeeld) dat ook “linkse” mensen ter harte zou moeten gaan. Aandacht voor grotendeels fictieve klimaatproblematiek, in plaats van voor echte milieuproblemen, etcetera, etcetera. Weinig echt “wereldverbeterends”, in de goede zin van het woord: “a far cry” van de verzetsjaren.

De reden zal zijn, zoals zo vaak tegenwoordig: “alles voor het grote geld”. Mensen/individuen worden geen belangwekkende doelen op zich (zoals in Carmiggelt’s “kronkels” nog wel), maar slechts een middel, zoals in alle –ismen (fascisme, communisme, kapitalisme), tot een extern of “hoger” doel of (eigen)belang.

Iets met omdraaien in het graf..

Dub Poetry

Dub Poetry is a Jamaican invention from the 1970s. Poetry on Reggae music, often with Dub effects. Jamaican-inspired, but also with an influential British branch, with a.o. Linton Kwesi Johnson. Branches also are in other places with many Jamaican migrants, such as Toronto.

Starting in the 1970s, it really set off since the Early 1980s.

LKJ

This I more or less knew, intrigued as I became when first hearing Linton Kwesi Johnson, with Bass Culture (1980) his first album I heard, around when I was 15 years old, around 1989. I liked reggae by then, even had fallen in love with it. My passion for poetry, however, was more temperate, though not absent. I liked playing with words, at times. I had some interest in literary writings (novels, even experimental ones), liked writing essays, and even tried to write some poems as well. I soon started writing song lyrics - related to poetry - as well, just liking the prospect of “cool” songs with good lyrics.

BOOKWORM

I had a “bookworm” period in my life, starting in my teens, but which slowly diminished after I became 30. I still read a lot (inc. social sciences), nonfiction, but less fiction. I guess I sought: “reality”, in some sense, and outside of the house. A busy pace, which left behind the timeless and solitary exploring in my youth of poems in books, Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Ben Okri, or less known ones. I read their poems too, but focused now more on actual human/social interaction.

So, although with less intensity, literary reading and writing remained an interest of mine.

I therefore also listen to lyrics of Dub Poets like, comparing with other poems I know, from different cultures.

VOCAL

First of all, though, I noticed the “flow” of the lyrics in Dub Poets, differing from Jamaican “Toasting” vocals. The styles can have similarities, but Toasting “rides” a riddim/beat more rhythmically – the precursor of Rap - , while Dub Poets rather “command” the riddim/beat.

Dub Poetry vocals - especially of the LKJ school - is often more like "talking" - with intonation and emphasis - than Toasting, which has a melodic musicality in it, even if not full singing as in other Reggae subgenres. The "soul" found in some good Reggae singing, is therefore not so much found in Dub Poetry, though emotions and "soul" can still be expressed by changing tempo, way of declamation, or screams and cries.

Crucially, Dub Poetry songs usually have each their own, original music (riddim/beat), not pre-set riddims. Sometimes, such an older Studio One or Channel One Reggae riddim echoes in dub poetry songs, even if newly composed. This makes it artistically more free or experimental.

The vocal difference of Dub poets with Toasting/Chatting is interesting, I think. What makes the flow different? Analyzing it, I can resume it as “theatricality”, but also as “sublimation” of themes. That’s a key difference between poetry – as genre – and “prose”. The latter “tells stories” or “explains literally”, whereas poetry sublimates earthly matters into philosophical, even spiritual, multi-interpretable realms. It does this – crucially – through meter, rhythm, and intonation (and rhyme). Also emphasizing specific words, slowly.

Regarding these techniques, indeed Dub Poetry is more “poetry” than toasting, the latter being more “flowing”, i.e. direct and rhythmically adapted to the music. More flowing, like “stories”.

OKU ONUORA

Jamaican Oku Onuora, who lived an eventful life, including prison time, was one of the first Dub Poets in Jamaica, in the 1970s. His 1979 “Reflections In Red” single became known as the first Dub Poetry song, pioneering the genre in a sense.

Oku Onuora became thus known as “father” of Dub Poetry. He was followed by people like Mbala, Jean Binta Breeze (the first woman, they say), Mutabaruka, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Michael Smith, soon after following in by the early 1980s, and further shaping, the tradition. It is kept alive by later, next-generation self-described Dub Poets like Ras Takura.

Oku Onuora’s vocal style on Reflections In Red included emphasis and slower pronunciation of significant words, and intonation speed changes. Such techniques are found not so much in Toasting or current dancehall Chatting, which is after all more bound to the musical rhythm, the steady “flow”. Onuora’s singing style certainly seemed to have influenced later Dub poets. The fact that Jamaican patois was used as language remained also significant to emphasize.

Such “flowing”, Toasting-like aspects from other Reggae/Dancehall are of course not absent in Dub Poetry vocals. Rather, they interrelate with these more “poetic” intonations and slowed down – often Patois - emphasis on words/terms.

PROTEST

Important is also to emphasize that "social protest" is the essence of Dub Poetry, as the 1979 Reflections In Red song by Oku Onuora, originating the genre, illustrates. Dub Poetry deals almost by definition with social commentary. More personal "love" or "romantic" themes are not absent - LKJ's Elaine, for instance -, but are the exception rather than the rule. Usually, there is a layer of social comment, making the message important, and thus (vocal) emphasis on certain terms and their connotations.

This of course has precedents in other "socially engaged" poetry, also among Black poets in the US, such as notably the Last Poets (started in 1968, during the civil rights movement), Gil Scott-Heron (of part-Jamaican descent) and others. These must have influenced Dub Poetry in Jamaica, as it would later conscious hip-hop.

Some "classic" works from these, include the Last Poets' Blessed Are Those Who Struggle (1977), and even earlier: Gil Scott-Heron's The Revolution Will Not Be Televized (1971). Mutabaruka calls the latter, Scott-Heron's "signature poem", like his own Dis Poem. He admits being influenced by it.

Oku Onuora, born Orlando Wong (he is of part-Chinese descent), the "father of dub poetry", began writing poetry in 1971 (deemed already subversive by prison authorities), so a direct relation with the Last Poets and him, seems not clear, though they stand in the same tradition of Black Power poetry. A tradition that goes back to Jamaican Marcus Garvey, who wrote quite some poetry too, using thus rhythm and meter, analogues, metaphor, layers, and rhyme, more than in his "prose", for a similar message of Black upliftment, often with a psychological element too.

There are thus multiple sources, feeding into what would be Dub Poetry, as it got mixed with Reggae music.

The point of view of dub poetry, when discussing social ills, is thus from the downtrodden, and against oppression and discrimination. It has a direct relation to the Black Power and Garvey-ite movement, of which the Rastafari movement after all is a part.

DUB

For a time, I found the term “Dub Poetry” somewhat puzzling. Apparently, early Dub Poet Oku Onuora coined this term as such. It was at first not entirely clear to me if it was vocalizing on existing Dub Reggae songs: say King Tubby-like Dub versions of Reggae songs, with echo, reverb and other added effects. Dub is also an interesting art form, combining thus with the art of Poetry sung/chatted in a musical way. Something like that.

Turns out that the term Dub Poetry is even more interesting in significance, in that the relationship between the music and the vocals is in the case of Dub Poetry is more communicative and in that sense “equal”, with the Dub Poet in part “commanding” the music to fit the poet/lyrical flow. This is much less the case with modern Dancehall or New Roots on set Riddims. Good, groovy Riddims mostly, with in the case of Jamaican riddims also exhibiting quality musicianship, but set, and hardly adaptable by vocalists on them..

This means different vocalists on the same Riddim by necessity adapt to fit the flow, drum, and chord structure of the riddim. Every artist still has its own original voice and style of singing/toasting, of course, but within a framework. Dub Poetry is in that sense freer and more experimental. Yet, not more “improvising”, as Dub Poets tend to be written on forehand. Many Toasting New Roots songs of course also, but in some Dancehalls, with some Sound Systems, improvising on the spot on a certain Riddim played, is common, less dependent on a “written text” than Dub Poetry.

UK-based dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson worked together with also UK-based Dennis Bovell for making Riddims with each song, whereas a Dub Poet like Mutabaruka worked together with veteran Jamaican musicians like Chinna Smith to make appropriate riddims with his Dub Poetry songs.

Bovell seemed to use and favour more Dub effects (echo, reverb, a.o.).

MESSAGE

When I tried to find out more about Dub Poetry in my teenage years, liking some songs of Linton Kwesi Johnson, I was partly misinformed by a Reggae author in the Netherlands, and another English one. In a “pop encyclopedia” Linton Kwesi Johnson was described as “anti-Rasta”, preferring nonspiritual social comment. Later statements by Kwesi Johnson himself contradicted this. He said he maybe was not really Rasta, but respected the Rastafari movement and its value for Blacks and Black power. Being a non-Rasta is something else than being “anti-Rasta”, this particular author (Dutch or English) did not seem to understand.

In his lyrics, Johnson chose, though, indeed a broader, social comment approach, with a Black power influence.

Who was more “really” Rasta, was the mentioned dub poetry pioneer Oku Onuora, as well as Mutabaruka, Jean Binta Breeze, Benjamin Zephaniah and later dub poets. Dub Poetry’s connection with the Rastafari movement seems therefore firm, but in a free way.

MUTABARUKA

Mutabaruka, who is also a social commentator with his much-listened radio broadcasts from Jamaica (Stepping Razor), identifies as a Rasta, but remains a free thinker, going against what he sees as common misconceptions or orthodoxies within Rastafari. He criticizes for example the connection of Rastafari to Christianity and Christ, preferring a focus of original African culture, and wisdom derived from natural living, instead of written dogmatic texts. The latter being especially problematic, due to the misuse of Christianity and the Bible by the European powers for their colonialism and slavery.

Mutabaruka foregrounds sub-Saharan African culture, so he neither got enamored with Islam instead of Christianity, as the Nation of Islam adherents among some Blacks in the US. He deplored that in some parts of Black Africa, Arab names replaced original African (e.g. Mande/Mandinga) names of individuals: so Mohammed, Hassan, or Abdul, - or adapted, such as Alieu (Ali) - instead of Mory or Sékou, for instance.

The kind of free thinking that can be expressed well through a medium like Dub Poetry – with some vocal “freedom” to emphasize slowly as said - , thereby exploring certain specific themes or "concepts" more analytically and poetically, so to speak.

Mutabaruka indeed uses the Dub Poetry genre well for this, including also his comments on social and political affairs, on a variety of his songs. On songs like Whiteman Country, Great Kings of Africa, Every Time I Hear the Sound, De System, or Junk Food, Mutabaruka uses the “slow emphasis” vocally, as well as repetition, and declamatory intonation, fit on riddims, or elsewhere foregrounding poetic declamation even with more experimental Afro-folk music (song Dance) or rock/reggae (Famine Injection), a bit outside the Reggae musical frame.

In LKJ’s, Mutabaruka’s, or other Dub Poets works (like of Benjamin Zephaniah) “abstract” or “surreal” imagery is hardly to be found, though there is symbolism. Dub poetics deal with “reality”, giving voice to the downtrodden, mostly from a Rasta perspective. This through description and protest, but also often “sketches” from life, given symbolical function.

MAGIC AND SURREAL

Rhythm and meter is however certainly there in Dub Poetry, used for intonation, and emphasizing words. “Sublimation” of literal meaning, as a function of poetry, but kept in the case of most Dub Poetry quite concrete and about real life, except with certain love songs that also exist in Dub poetry.

The only artist in Jamaican culture representing, perhaps, a surrealist or abstract “poetry” school was Lee “Scratch” Perry. Here and there, in Perry’s body of work one finds Dub Poet-like songs, with him talking, but mostly Perry wanted to sing his songs. This despite initial negative doubts about Perry’s singing ability of producer Coxsone Dodd, at Studio One.

Later, artists like Eek-A-Mouse, Elephant Man, or Ward 21 brought some “surreal” absurdity – to degrees – to Reggae lyrics, that however mostly remained prosaic and slightly poetic.

PERFORMANCE POETRY

Dub Poetry is categorized by some also as “performance poetry”, which is a bit simplistic. At the very least it points at the tight connection with the music, and some “theatricality” as I called it, but they’re still written poems, mixed with music for a specific art work, after all recorded.

In reality, I think other Reggae (Roots, vocals, toasting, even Dancehall) is more “performance poetry”, especially since there are very much good, “deeper” lyrics about different aspects of life: far beyond simply put personal grievances: especially in Rastafari-influenced Reggae, there are spiritual truths shared, and social or political comment tends to be broad, dealing with the “system” and humanity as a whole. It is prosaic, for sure, but with enough poetic elements.

POETICS

Dub Poetry now, I think emphasizes “poetic” aspects more: word play and emphasis, intonation, layered and (much less) indirect meanings. There are certainly some poetic, deeper “layers” in Dub Poetry lyrics, but “indirect meanings” are not the forte of Jamaican lyrics, arguably. In fact, “indirect messaging” is only common in parts of the world, in some, usually hierarchic, class-based cultures: it is not a universal human trait, as cultural anthropologists concluded.

Northern Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world are most indirect, followed by some stricter Islamic and Hindu cultures, whereas cultural regions like Latin America, most of less-industrialized Southern and Eastern Europe (rural parts more), common folk in East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, have a place for “magic”, but are overall straight-forward, perhaps for not having to defend a privileged position of dubious origins: the curse of Anglo-Saxon, and wider “White/Euro” global dominance..

Some of this “subtle” Anglo-Saxon influence reached Jamaica, as an English-speaking former British colony, but mostly the “poetics” in Dub Poetry center – in my experience listening to it – more on “symbolic” and playful – sometimes metaphoric - descriptions and vivid, fine – but realistic! - imagery, aided by rhythm and musicality (sometimes experimental/dub-wise sonically), and emphasize messages, rather than vagueness or indirectness.

TO CONCLUDE

All this combined, is what make Dub Poetry unique as an art form: within Reggae and Jamaican music, and within the world.

The difference with Toasting (U Roy, I Roy, Big Youth a.o.), message "chanters" like Prince Fari, or even current New Roots chatting by people like Capleton, Sizzla, or Junior Kelly is not always clear-cut – especially with “free” and “varying” vocals - , but cannot be otherwise, since they are fed by the same musical tradition of rhythmic speech, with African origins. They probably also influenced each other, resulting in a different way to express a social, sometimes personal, message, whether poetic or prosaic. Whether bound to a riddim/beat, or not.

You almost could conclude that what King Tubby is to Dub (the originator), Oku Onuora with the first ground-breaking Dub Poetry song Reflections In Red is to Dub Poetry, also as originator. Onuora even created an own vocal style of “slow emphasis” and heavy declamation, that more or less influenced later Dub Poets. These later Dub Poets further shaped the genre with own peculiarities.

In another, cultural sense, it has its roots in Jamaican folk speech, and in rhythmic vocal styles, going back to folk styles like Mento, and before. Even further back: to the African "griot" or "jeli" tradition of musical story tellers travelling around and through villages and communities, discussing current affairs and issues, through poems or stories on music.

Lyrically, definitely, Dub Poetry can be seen as part of the Black Power movement.

Clave

Many people – even in music – know only “more or less” what a “clave” actually is. Of course, some are more knowledgeable regarding this, but still: “the clave” needs perhaps some elaboration or explanation. I guess some specialized percussionists and drummers know how to define the “clave”.

In essence, clave can be defined both as a “rhythmic pattern” and as an instrument, its name derived from the Spanish for “key” (in music) or “clef”, and is as term often related to Cuban music.

The confusing thing is maybe that in present, modern-day Spanish the word for “key” is “Llave” (so starting with double L), derived from original Latin for key Clavis. The Italian and Catalan words for “key” still have this original latin “k” sound: Chiave in Italian and Clau in Catalan.

Either way, it is meant as “entry” into a musical structure, in this case rhythmically, as opposed to notes and chords for the melodic and harmonic parts.

CUBA

In several descriptions I found online, and also in “offline” scholarly works (like “books”: remember those?) the connection with Cuba recurs.

More specifically – and crucially – with Afro-Cuban culture. It is actually a “key” (pun intended) to African retentions in Afro-Cuban music. The later well-known Cuban genres Rumba and Son (feeding into even better known Salsa) have their own “claves”: both the Rumba and Son clave are known for a 3-2 (or 2-3) pattern, divided in 2 parts (measures): with two beats on one side and three on the other half.

AFRICA

Musicologists – with some good arguments, I think – relate this to a simplification of bell patterns so common in traditional West African music: also those parts where from many enslaved Africans ended up in Cuba, and elsewhere in the West: southern Nigeria (incl. Yorubaland), and Congo.

Bell patterns are varied and common throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa, though. They are also varied from culture to culture and ethnic group to ethnic group within Africa, with sometimes a much higher degree of complexity than the mentioned simplified 2-3 clave. I tried to study and play some (from Fon/Ewe culture) for instance, and it took certainly some time: I found that a nice challenge, though.

These more complicated bell patterns, of course, have a relation to the music they are supposed to lead or fit into in sub-Saharan African music: more complex polyrhythmic music, with several rhythmic patterns played at the same time, usually on different types of drums. Such bell patterns are in that sense the “key” (clave) - or “glue” - to connect all rhythmic patterns and instruments. Somehow related, that is the reason why e.g. in Yoruba culture the metal “bell” is music is metaphorically described as “the head”, as opposed to the “corporal”, the body the various drums then represent, after all made of animal skin. Bell or clave as “head”.

CARIBBEAN

Some of these original “bell pattern” complexity still survived more fully in the West, however. Notably in Haitian Vodou, or Cuban Santería. On my own instrumental song based on “Vodou” music (somewhat simplified) – fittingly named Apwoksimasyon, Haitian Creole for “approximation” - I play a more complex Yanvalou-based bell pattern. It took some time for me to learn it.. a pleasant time, but still, haha.

In the secular, “popular” music genres in Cuba – Son, Rumba, Salsa – on the other hand such key rhythmic patterns are a bit simplified. Not necessarily easy for non-Cuban novices to Afro-Cuban music, but definitely learnable.

These Cuban Rumba claves and Son claves got usually played with a wooden instrument, rather than with bells as in Africa. With that we’ve come to the other meaning of “clave”: that of the instrument.

INSTRUMENT

A “clave” - or rather plural: “claveS” - as instrument in Cuba, are two wooden sticks: one resting in the palm (the “female”), the other one – the “male” - used to hit it. They were made originally of tropical hardwood (rosewood, ebony, grenadilla), and have a sharp, high-pitched sound.

Some historians state that the wood was also used for shipbuilding, so there might have been difficulty for enslaved Africans to bring the bells from their culture to the West, using these woods instead for that musical function the bells had. Seems plausible, although I imagine “metal” must have also been used by Spanish, Portuguese, and other colonizers (though “metal” came a bit later to Iberia, when compared to other parts of Europe). Perhaps it was less available for the enslaved and their descendants.

These wooden sticks in any case obtained that African “bell” function in Afro-Cuban music forms that would develop: Rumba, Son, etcetera. The original Cuban claves still have the darkish red colour and texture of the ebony wood it is from.

VARIANT

In Cuba itself, other variants of the Claves instrument also developed, such as ones with differing sticks: one bigger (again the “female”) with some holes for resonance, resting in the hand palm, and another smaller “hitting” (“male”) stick. This one (often of rosewood) sounds nice and sharp too, and are usually called “clave africano” or “rumba clave”, as opposed to the “son clave”.

Though mostly made in Cuba, the “africano” in Clave Africano refers to its use in more directly African 6/8 rhythmic patterns. Their colour is often lighter (yellowish, light-red). It has a somewhat “deeper” and “rounder” sound than the original Claves, perhaps explaining its “raison d’etre” in Cuban music genres, like Rumba.

The smaller, darkish brown Claves still are more common, though. These even made their way into Western pop music (e.g. the Beatles’ And I Love Her – though it is no Cuban pattern played with them).

While the rhythmic guideline – or key – the clave carries, “glues” the instruments together, in my experience with live performances I saw in Cuba, or of Cuban music elsewhere, the clave sticks are not always played throughout the whole song, but at the beginning or at some other - ha! – “key” moments in the song. Fading in and out, so to speak.

FERNANDO ORTIZ

Cuban anthropologist scholar Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969) wrote several then in a sense groundbreaking works on Afro-Cuban musical instruments, including also the Clave(s).

He pays much attention to its origins, and emphasizes its relative uniqueness for Cuba. Ortiz still points at similar “sticks”-like instruments in Africa, as well in Southern Spain, another region musically influential in Cuba (especially in the early colonial period), notably the castanets.

He even goes as far as to describe comparable instruments far away as Oceania and Eastern Asia. Eventually, Ortiz concludes that it eventually is a specific Cuban invention, based on older influences (Africa, Spain), but just as much on practical considerations, and local developments.

He also recognizes its rhythmic function derived from African bells, but also points out that it translated as well to more mixed or “white” Cuban cultures; the more rustic, less polyrhythmic folk music of descendants of Spaniards and Canarians (with still some African influences), often guitar-based. The clave played there tends to be more slowly and rustic, different from the “wild” polyrhythmic function it has in Afro-Cuban genres like Rumba, more like the bells in sub-Saharan Africa. These now, ironically, need that clave less, as drums and other instruments already know how to combine and merge.

The claves seem – as the Samba-like patterns but on guitar in Bossa Nova – a reference, but watered-down, to (also) African rhythms. Something like a “clave” (as rhythmic 2-3 pattern) can for that reason also be found in Brazilian music, like Bossa Nova.

The wooden instrument itself indeed maintains its cultural connection to Cuba, more than other places. Making its high, dry sound – especially of the son claves of two similar red-brown sticks – represent a Cuban or Salsa “feel”, also when – as said - slowing down to bolero or ballad-like songs.

Spanish poet Federico García Lorca described the sound poetically as “wooden drops”.

CULTURE

The “clave” is also used as a term for a rhythmic concept, in particular to describe sub-Saharan African polyrhythmic music. Even more particularly to the part author Ned Sublette calls “forest Africa” (South Nigeria, Cameroun, Congo), to distinguish it from “griot” Africa (Senegambia, Guinea), with more Islamic influences and string instruments, and the roots of the Blues.

Ned Sublette, and also a scholar like Robert Farris-Thompson – kind of spread this musicologist term and meaning of “clave Africa”.

The Spanish colonizers – at least in the early stages – had a policy to avoid importing “Islamicized” slaves (literally: “those raised with Moors”), instead getting them from forest Africa, more to the South. In the case of Cuba, relatively many from Yorubaland, the Calabar area (Nigeria/Cameroun), and Congo (present-day DR Congo) These brought the polyrhythmic music – with the clave principle – to Cuba.

English, French, and US colonizers and slave traders had not that policy, and instead made cynically use of the open market the Senegambia and Guinea represented for them as slave source. These enslaved Africans brought the “swing” and melisma musical styles to the US, feeding into Jazz and Blues. Mono-rhythmic – with “swinging” variation around it – and thus with no real use of the “clave” rhythmical “connecting” key.

CREOLIZATION

So, while the clave “whitened”, “watered down” a bit in some Cuban genres (not all), or at least “simplified”, it still represents a sub-Saharan African connection – even regarding wooden instruments used also in Africa, besides bells -, perhaps mixing with remnants of the castanets-culture of Spain, and the rhythms of Flamenco (often tapped on guitar case), and stick use of Canarian (Canary Islands) music, as Fernando Ortiz describes.

There were relatively many Canarian immigrants in Cuba, due to their experience with sugar plantations (unlike mainland Spaniards), and the first Spanish colonizers with and after Columbus tended to be relatively often from South West Spain (Andalucia, Extremadura) from where (Huelva, Cádiz) the ships set sail to the Americas, with some Basques and Castilians among them too.

Later there were Chinese contract labourers as migrants into Cuba, fleeing migrants from St Domingue/Haiti, Spanish migrants from other parts (notably Galicia and Asturias), and slave traders and owners from more industrial parts of Spain, like Catalonia (explaining the Catalan “slave” surnames of a part of the Afro-Cubans, losing – as in British and French colonies – their original African family names, replaced by their owners’ European (in Cuba Spanish, Basque, Catalan, and French) surnames. As slavery expanded some Senegambian/Guinea slaves still ended up in Cuba, with slight musical influences (as the Chinese and Haitians also had).

This was in the later 19th c., but Cuban music by then already had its mixed “clave” base.

The instrument itself – as related to shipbuilding – is of local, colonial origin. The rhythmic key it represents partly, but rooted in Africa, as a process of what Caribbean scholars call “creolization” in the Caribbean: local developments based on African (and other Roots).

CUBANNESS

All this, Ortiz argues, added to the typical Cubanness – of the instrument -, Cuba, with its relatively large percentage of Whites, and racial mixture, some Spanish-African cultural mixtures, with many mulattoes, besides a Black population. He stresses, relatedly, wooden “claves” as such could not be found on other Caribbean islands, until recently.

Moreover, the clave could thrive – both as rhythmic concept and as instrument - within the rich and varied musical culture of Cuba, continuing with its “spin-off” genre Salsa (mostly Son-Cuban-based). This increased its internationalization. In modern US-based Salsa - however - the Clave as instrument tends to be replaced by other "woodblock"-like instruments or by the jeniger plastic based "jamblock", often part of percussion sets.

An interesting history, anyway; a very Caribbean history of survival and creativity.

Dennis and Bob

Dennis Brown became known as the Crown Prince of Reggae. This title was given to him by someone known then as the King of Reggae: Bob Marley, who called Dennis his favourite Reggae artist..

Perhaps such laudatory titles, while creative and playful, should not be taken as absolute truths: especially in a wide and varied music scene as that of Reggae and Jamaican music, with many good singers, artists, and songwriters. Many of whom only did not reach the level of international fame of Bob Marley, or even less than Dennis Brown, who hardly reached the mainstream.

It is interesting, though, to compare these two artists with honorary titles musically. I – and other Reggae fans – did that already.

There is some truth to the Spanish saying "las comparaciones son odiosas" (all comparisons are hateful), but comparing can still be useful to describe and analyze cultural developments.

VOICE

My opinion has always been that purely focusing on “voice” and “singing” Dennis Brown is better than Bob Marley, though this may come close to sacrilege for some. A (Reggae) musician friend of mine, here in Amsterdam, placed a nuance.. "Bob could sing very well, it’s maybe the “timbre” of Dennis Brown’s voice which is prettier or more soulful". In the whole, this friend (a Reggae bass player) further argued: "the lyrics, melodic flexibility, and songwriting, Bob Marley was a “fuller” artist than Dennis Brown".

LYRICS

Regarding Bob’s lyrics I imagined he had a point, though I had some doubts. We must beware of commercial aspects: you just get to hear Marley’s songs much more, so also the lyrics. That being said, I must admit – and said it before, also on this blog – that Bob’s lyrics were special and wise. Much wisdom about humanity, poverty, the Black struggle, and, well, life. This was formulated, moreover, – as Lee Perry said – in accessible, understandable words for many people. That’s a skill Bob Marley had, and made him appeal to many people, especially the poorer people of the world, even outside of Jamaica or the Reggae scene as such.

SINGING

Still, I am willing to argue that Dennis Brown’s appeal was on the other hand not just his soulful voice or timbre. Indeed his singing had even more “reach” (technically/musically) than Bob Marley’s. This reach is not just relating to chord progressions or other such musical issues, but also regarding a certain recognizable, “original” style of singing.

This Dennis Brown singing style has, after all, inspired other singers in Jamaica too, even by their own admittance. Echoes of Dennis’ soulful, powerful “deep tenor” singing can therefore be found in later Jamaican Reggae singers like Frankie Paul, Luciano, and Bushman, and more (e.g. Natty King), relatively lesser known ones. That’s influence.

That voice is a good way to bring lyrics across, but can also “distract” from text, from some perspective. Or it adds another layer, is another way to look at it.

LYRICS

Another interesting question is whether the lyrics and songwriting of Dennis Brown really stayed that much behind those of Bob Marley’s. I heard and read several people say that, but even that is not so clear to me. The “distracting” voice of Dennis may influenced that thought, but is it true?

In other words: did Dennis have lyrics comparable to Bob’s?

An interesting comparison, due to their both being Jamaican Reggae artists with a Rastafari adherence, conscious lyrics and love lyrics, and a short generation apart mostly in the Roots era (Dennis lived on partly through the early Dancehall era), but different degrees of international fame.

MISTRUST

There is mistrust in Jamaica about Bob Marley’s fame being “helped” by the fact that he was half-White, and that musical qualities thus became secondary to racial preferences in the Western world.

Though I would not discard this – as is too often done nowadays – as a “conspiracy theory”, as I think race might have played a role. I also think, however, that it is not the only reason of Bob’ s relative fame, when compared to people like Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs, Bob Andy, Peter Tosh, etcetera.

Marley certainly had some extraordinary talents, in particular the combination of them (catchy melodies, memorable lyrics, charisma, and accessibility). Bob maintained his Rastafari and pro-Black stance, confirming his sincerity, even with messages running counter to the dominant Western economic system. Bob himself kept his integrity, in other words, and maybe he could because of his talent and charisma.

MUSICALLY

Besides lyrically, also musically this integrity was kept, but to a lesser degree. The adaptations of Bob Marley's music in the mix (by executive producer Chris Blackwell, mainly) toward Rock and pop were mostly at the cost of rhythm and groove. I as a percussionist notice that even more, probably. Elsewhere on this blog I spoke in a post/essay of April, 2017 - (how time flies..) - of this as “subdued percussion”, i.e. percussion and drums too soft in the mix. For my taste..

This somewhat more “Western” Rock sound (though limited) is not irrelevant for the theme of this post. It explained Bob’s music wider appeal, also outside the Reggae scenes, and among different races.

The Joe Gibbs, Niney, or even the earlier Studio One home-made Jamaican productions of Dennis Brown seemed less “translatable”. Especially the more “Rootsy” ones. Or were deemed as such: it often did not even reach enough of the public in the first place, due to this "commercial" (or ideological?) estimation.

Maybe Dennis Brown’s songs were too Black and Jamaican, for it to have the same international appeal as Bob’s? Or is that just an illusion in some minds, wishful thinking, even?

LYRICS

First the lyrics. I know many of Dennis Brown’s song and I remember several memorable lyrics, phrases from his songs. Singing them. Expressing Rastafari faith, often in Biblical terms, popular sayings. Kind of repetitive, but functional. Rebellious lyrics, against the system, are there too. They are either way more “messages” than stories, and that’s a difference with Bob, I think. Bob tells more original stories in his lyrics, and depicts visual imagery in well-chosen words.

Dennis Brown certainly has intelligent and commenting lyrics, but focusing on mental, or even metaphorical/abstract, messages, Rasta vocabulary (“Rasta children, I and I come from Zion"), or Bible scenes. It is more introverted than Bob’s lyrics, really. Bob looked and commented at the wider world, and many people world wide understood. Also a difference between Dennis and someone like Peter Tosh, who had a more “rebellious”, directly socially commenting image. More political, while Dennis was overall more “spiritual”.

Otherwise put, Bob’s lyrics were more realistic, Dennis’s more symbolic and conceptual. Bob’s more prosaic, epic, and Dennis’s more poetic.

That does not mean that Dennis Brown’s lyrics do not have the same wisdom as in Bob’s lyrics, with similar “emotional truths”, especially when touching human relations.

A good example is the song Let Love In (Your Heart). An essential truth, and well and soulfully sung, kind of meandering (a difference with straighter-singing Bob).

Also songs like Looking and Watching, Revolution, Tribulation, The Half, Concentration, or Rasta Children, contain deeper human wisdoms, way beyond formulaic statements of faith.

The lyrically claustrophobic Three Meals A Day about prison life is minimal, but nonetheless poetic. And again inward-looking: Bob was on the other hand more often outward-looking..

LOVE SONGS

Dennis had more love songs than Bob Marley. Besides a Roots icon, Dennis also became somehow known as a Lovers Rock man, alongside the Cool Ruler. Some of his relatively bigger hits were love songs.

His handsome, joyous – pleasantly seductive - smile when dancing (inherited by his daughter Marla), made him have a sex-appeal with women.

Yet, again: the love song lyrics were also more inward-looking than those of others. Dennis’s relatively biggest hit was Money In The Pocket (high in the UK chart in the 1970s) even spoke of inner, mental processes, rather than the outside world.

If there is one truth about the claims by some that Dennis Brown had less appealing lyrics than Bob, it is that Bob’s extrovert “outward” lyrics appeal more to people than introvert “inner monologues” or mental processes with which Dennis often surrounded his (social) messages.

Maybe that’s all too human, even if superficial. Some might prefer those “inward”-looking lyrics, as some big commercial hit songs at times show. Different tastes, majorities and minorities, etcetera.

SONGWRITING

Lee “Scratch” Perry also said about Bob Marley: “he had the best melodies”. He had good melodies and catchy vocal lines, but “the best” is too absolute. Perry worked a lot with Bob, but several other Reggae artists had a talent for catchy melodies in song, that stay with you. Too many to mention: Bob Andy, Alton Ellis, Gregory Isaacs, Mighty Diamonds, Burning Spear, Culture, Sugar Minott, Chronixx, Tarrus Riley, Beres Hammond, and, yes, also Dennis Brown.

Dennis’s songs like Prophet Rides Again, No More Will I Roam, I Don’t Want To Be A General, If This World Were Mine, Should I, The Promised Land, from early Studio One days: I Have Got To Go, are but examples of memorable songs owing that in part to the strong melodies. Sung well, that also helps.

I am even willing to argue that, overall, Dennis Brown had more immediately catchy melodies in his songs than Bob Marley. More memorable at least, partly due to a fact that I mentioned before: the more repetitive nature of Dennis Brown’s lyrics and songs. This combined with “filler” often wordless “wailing” soul cries (“Oh yeah”, Yea-ah”, “Oh now”) making the lyrics with words – and the chorus lines! - stick out more.. The function of variation.

Bob Marley tended to stick more to the “conventional” Verse-Bridge-Chorus structure of songs, thus more multifaceted and ordered, but recognizable. Dennis Brown in some songs too, but just as often mixed this with “chanting” a main and secondary melody/vocal line, playing with them on the Riddim/music. Not unlike Burning Spear, or another Brown: Barry Brown.

Dennis could pull that off with his talent and soulful voice, but it misses some structure that many are used to in pop songs. Bob had that more (and in a good way). Another explanation for the difference in international fame or (relative) mainstream appeal.

Bob Marley said himself that he wanted to sound like the then Reggae singer Little Roy (of the 1969 hit song Bongo Nyah fame), while Dennis Brown, said his singing style was influenced by earlier Reggae singer Delroy Wilson.

Interestingly, also the relative songwriting styles seemed inspiring: Little Roy more of the Verse-Chorus school, and Delroy Wilson (like Dennis) more of the free soulful singing school.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, about the reasons for the difference in mainstream popularity between Bob and Dennis: are they commercial? Yes. Racial? Most probably too.

If there are any sensible, nonbiased reasons for the difference of popularity/commercial success, they are cultural. Dennis stuck more to Jamaican cultural interpretations of Reggae, some of which “translated” not so well to non-Jamaican audiences as did Bob’s Reggae, maybe stimulated by the deal with Chris Blackwell and Island. The Joe Gibbs “sound”, and his even “Rootsier” work with Niney The Observer knew few adaptations to European tastes. Luckily, in my opinion. It kept the groove.

That this authentic culture is not always appreciated outside of it, is a lamentable fact in this world, though it is also that there are true fans of authentic cultures other than their own.

Reggae’s international spread proved that, and Dennis Brown is known and respected among Reggae fans all over the world: Black, white, Asian, or otherwise. Several of his songs were not just hits in Jamaica, but also – among reggae fans, at Reggae parties - “inna di dance”, at sound systems, or “inna di club”, throughout Europe, North America, Japan, Africa, and elsewhere. Even well into the Dancehall era.

The translatability is therefore difficult, but not impossible.

Pan Flutes

Some Dutch commentators in newspapers described certain recurring street musicians in Amsterdam as “panfluit-indianen”, to be translated as: pan flute Indians. They referred to South American musicians from the Andes region (Peru, Bolivia, or Ecuador), travelling and playing their pan flute in touristy central Amsterdam streets - as in other cities of Europe -, usually solo or in small groups, combined with singing or other instruments, or even recorded tape music, giving the folk music a pop edge, haha.

The term “pan flute Indians” is in itself condescending, as all dehumanizing remarks are. It can even be considered racist, due to both the “othering” and dehumanization it implies.

While factual, the at the same time condescending qualification, also denies that playing the pan flute – also known as panpipes - is not at all easy. It is a developed skill, connected moreover to a rich musical legacy.

In the case of Peruvian musicians, it is of course the cultural legacy of the Andes region, the highland Amerindians, representing an intriguing world and culture, albeit perhaps clouded by clichés put in our head (lama’s, woolen hats and ponchos). The pan flute combining with the shamanic drum, and guitars, in Andean countries makes an unique, magic feel. Since I am a percussionist, the role of the drum naturally interests me.

Pan flutes are quite known globally as being an instrument in that part of South America, but it has a history elsewhere in the world too. Maybe less known among the common populace. This post is about that.

Historical and archaeological studies found that pan flutes were throughout history known all over the world, in many different cultures. On all continents.

The intriguing thing is – I find – that as main musical instrument it only remained important in a few cultures: the said Andes region, and – for some reason – Romania, in Eastern Europe. Why did it “survive” in particularly those two regions? Perhaps inexplicable, yet an interesting mystery.

Pan flutes are further known – still today – also in a few other places, such as (other) parts of Europe and the Americas, and in Africa and Asia. Interestingly, though, Peru and Romania remain the two countries most associated with the pan flute.

ANDES

In the case of Andean Peru and surroundings, wind instruments predate European arrival, so also the pan flute go back to the Amerindian roots: with the (Spanish) Europeans came later the string instruments, guitar, and guitar-like. Maybe a but comparable to how hand drums might represent the African roots within Black music with also modern instruments.

Elsewhere in the Americas, “scraper” like instruments represent an Amerindian remnant, though these scrapers were also known in African music. In the more maintained and purer Amerindian cultures in the Andean region, the pan flute is definitely a direct connection to the “pre-contact” indigenous culture, as are other less-known instruments used there traditionally, such as shamanic drums.

That means music’s original connection to the natural surroundings, and in that sense “pure” or “pristine”, but also more spiritual.

ROMANIA

Romania as “pan flute island” is more enigmatic. The pan flute’s first use there is, anyway, hidden in the mist of times, though according to some sources not that far back, known since the 17th c. (and perhaps before).

An explanation – though hard to prove – might lie in the relatively large Gypsy, or more correct ethnically Roma(ni) – population Romania has. In fact, percentage-wise, Romania is one of the countries in Europe with relatively the largest Gypsy/Roma population, along with Bulgaria.

In Western Europe, only Spain is known for having a substantial Gypsy/Roma population. In Eastern Europe in a few more countries, with own musical traditions. The Flamenco music of South Spain received some Gypsy influences, but is South Spanish music in essence.

Gypsy music/Roma music in Romania is therefore different, more adapted to the region there, with East European/Klezmer-like traits. As a nomadic people, Roma tended to take musical elements from parts they traveled through, rather than hold on strictly to own traditions, though these (North Indian elements) persist.

Historically known in Ancient Greece too, the pan flute is named after a Greek God Pan, and it might just be that exactly the “nomadic” lives Roma chose to live, made them safeguard ancient musical traditions lost in more settled, modernized communities in the surroundings.

Local, Jewish, Romanian, but also Turkish influences are notable among the Lautari musicians, as the Roma music class is known in Romania. Among the Lautari (named after a lute) various instruments play a role, but also a pan flute. Sources say it was brought by the Turks (also because of etymology of words for it: muscal and nai).

The pan flute is now used seldom among these lautari, though they were known as their “primary” instrument. Besides in Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere, also in Turkey (and indeed Spain) Roma were known as relatively often musicians.

As with the Spanish guitar of local, South Spanish origin (with Persian/Moorish antecedents), the Roma in Eastern Europe, Greece, and Turkey used local instruments from there, including thus probably the pan flute, and later more violins, accordions, as the clichés on Romanian Roma music are known.

These Roma/Gypsy Lautari musicians in Romania used the pan flute originally, but in time less. Its tradition however survived in Romanian folk music.

ORIGINS

There is even a source that states that the Romanian-area pan flute influenced its used in the Andes region of Peru, since around the 17th c.. This seems nonsense to me, and thus a dubious source.

Maybe driven by too much pride or cultural nationalism, historical sources showed that pan flutes have existed worldwide in various cultures, and it is also common sense. It’s a very basic instrument that could arise everywhere, requiring after all blowing at the edges of different-sized tubes.

Even the presence of Bamboo - while useful - seems not to predispose Eastern Asia, as woods have also been used for them. I learned that this blowing is not that simple, and does at first seem not natural – i.e. requiring effort, as with blowing a trumpet – but it is a skill that in time can be acquired.

A further argument that the pan flute is not of Romanian origin, but known originally world wide, is that they are historically also known in (central) Africa, and centuries back. In the Bantu regions, far from regions of Turkish or Arab influences, and before dominant European colonial influences, such as in Congo, Kenya, South Sudan, and Mozambique, they have a historical presence.

The Luba (DR Congo), Konso (South Sudan/Ethiopia), Shona (Zimbabwe) and Nyungwe (Tete region, Mozambique) peoples, are examples of peoples with an important role for pan flutes in their traditional music.

Today, especially in Mozambique, the “Nyanga” as panflutes are known there, still survive in music.

Its historical presence in China (later reaching Turkey), still in Vietnam, and also in e.g. Papua New Guinea, further shows that pan flutes ere universally human, and not Romanian or Turkish in origin, and not even of Peruvian origin – even if found there from a long time, way before the Spanish came, but even in pre-Inca times). The sizes and shapes (and number of tubes) may differ per culture, as do the musical structures, but the principles of playing are the same.

Pan flute-like instruments were known all over the world historically, though. Another example is the still present pan flute tradition of the Solomon Islands in Oceania, often combined with interesting bamboo percussion.

SURVIVAL

The most enigmatic about this instrument’s history is not so much that it originated (easy to come up with), but rather where and why it survived in certain regions, and others (even neighbouring ones) not.

Why not among other Amerindians, outside the Andes region? Known in certain parts of Iberia historically too, but especially in Galicia (NW Spain) and bordering North Portugal (less known elsewhere on the peninsula), and in Italy mainly in the (far northern) Brianza region, while it was known in ancient Rome as it was in Greece. Why common in Romanian folk music, but not in bordering regions like the Balkan, Bulgaria, or Ukraine? It is less known there, anyway.

Why still maintained in parts of Mozambique, among the Nyungwe people, but absent or less in other parts of Africa as an instrument?

Above all, this shown an interesting aspect of folk culture. Folk culture is largely a natural development, for sure, but also a conscious choice of original creativity, self-expression, an aim of “distinction”, or to use a modern term: “identity”.

“Originality” is what makes folk culture distinct, to summarize. If all folk culture were the same, there would be no folk culture. Its essence lies after all in its originality and distinctiveness/difference from other (surrounding) cultures.

The life-affirming creativity and originality of folk culture is beautiful..

Some cultures chose the pan flute for this, but each in their own distinct ways, as the differences in uses – within wider music and dance - between South America, Europe, and Africa show..

REGGAE

Having become more or less a Reggae connoisseur over time (“expert” sounds so lame), I do have an idea about its use in Reggae music, that is: of the pan flute.

Not really, only a few examples of pan flute or very similar sounds, with Burning Spear’s song Free Nelson Mandela as prime example. Adds a nice touch to that song..

POP MUSIC

The pan flute did reach wider Western pop music here and there, however. With a solo in the famous hit California Dreaming, by the Mamas & Papas, in the equally famous Africa by Toto, as well as - more predictably - in covers of the Andean classic El Condor Pasa, such as by Simon & Garfunkel. Then to songs of other rock/pop acts, from Sting and A-Ha to the Spice Girls, and, well, Shakira..

SEE ALSO: http://music.africamuseum.be/instruments/english/congo%20drc/mishiba.html

https://www.panflutejedi.com/pan-flute-history.html